Those were the first words out of my mouth once the final scene concluded and the movie was over. After a trying near 3 hours of movie, it wasn't that I was dissatisfied. On the contrary, I was quite confused at what I had just seen: a movie that had a lot of emotion behind it, but also a lot of extremely confusing and often contradictory scenes that left me scratching my head. It has been said that this was supposed to be considered as an "epilogue" to the first two, and not part of the trilogy. But due to pressure from Paramount this was added in and named accordingly, to its detriment I would say.
Part III takes place an extended time after Part II and focuses mainly on Michael's attempts to further legitimize the business. I mentioned this in the last review - and it rears its head again in this one. There is a lot of regret and sadness with how these attempts are presented to the viewer, which is part of the good. However, there are also smatterings of the same-old that show up every so often, which is the bulk of the bad. The character dynamics have changed drastically, and most of them are no longer recognizable from their previous selves. This is especially true with characters such as Connie - once a sniveling, whining, yelling, screaming battered wife who is now more cutthroat than Michael himself with no real explanation as to the reasoning. There's Anthony, who once adored his father but now supposedly resents him (according to Kay, anyway), yet this is all thrown in the garbage later in the movie with no explanation (more later). There's Mary, his daughter who is now running the Vito Andolini Corleone Foundation as a figurehead to money laundering...she dominates roughly a third of the movie, I kid you not. This wouldn't be so bad except that she is not nearly as polarizing as Apollonia was in Part II, and Apollonia had only a few minutes to showcase the character yet ended up way more memorable. Then there's Vincent, who I will get to in a later part.
In the first scenes we see Vincent Mancini arrive. He's the son of Sonny Corleone, and apparently was an unplanned child, since he does not carry the Corleone name at this time. He runs into Mary, Michael's daughter, who has grown up. She mentions that they've met before, when he was 15 and she was 8, alluding to some sort of sexual encounter at a wedding. Based on the ages this would put this event sometime after the events of Part II but before Part III, meaning that Vincent was already in his early teens during Part II but never introduced. This scene threw me, because she mentioned they were cousins but I couldn't initially piece together how that was possible. It was then that it struck me that I had forgotten that Sonny was Michael's brother...and I had forgotten because I seemed to recall that he wasn't a brother by blood, but that may have been my lack of attention during the first movie. In either case, the blatant and thrown-together attachment of these two right from the jump annoyed me. Apollonia from Part I was dismissive, shy, and partially disinterested at Michael's advances, and in turn he didn't have to do much to end up impressing her into their marriage. Here, Vincent is portrayed as an irresistible ladies man that gets women to do anything, even drop their panties and risk death without a second thought. This simply is not believable, as Kay herself will attest to repeatedly throughout all three films.
Despite the previous scene, Vincent takes a reporter home who wants a story from Michael. This exchange makes absolutely no sense for a variety of reasons. First, she never gets the story. Second, the attraction is forced and has no energy behind it whatsoever. Third, Mary seemingly doesn't give a care about this womanizer taking this hot blonde back to his place for some fun, and fourth, she is nearly killed during an attempt on Vinny's life but just calmly calls the cops at his behest. She is then never seen or referred to again in the rest of the movie. I'm still trying to figure out if this was just a blatant attempt to add more time to the movie - because they could have cut this entire 10-20 minutes off the movie easily and lost nothing. The attempt on his life could have been better served without her involved.
I will give Vincent credit for the character itself. It brings back very good and close memories of early Michael, immediately after he killed the other Dons in Part I. The role is played to perfection, and at times you can almost wax some nostalgia about the mob days. The problem isn't the character or the role, clearly. It's that he is playing second fiddle to others who are pale shadows of their former selves. Maybe that was the intent. The problem is that some characters, in their pale shadowness, ended up being caricatures instead of standouts. Take Michael Corleone, for example.
He is awarded a medal from the church, he is writing letters to his kids, he is doing "family" things and attempting to be wholesome. That's fine...except when he goes back to the casino round table with the other Dons in Vegas and passes them a bunch of money, in an attempt to dissolve the underbelly and step away from it. His intentions are good, but he purposely leaves out Joey Zaza, at the time the primary handler between all of the Dons. It is assumed that this is Michael sending a message to Joey about the attack on Vinny, but it comes off as if Michael is still a strong part of the same crime dealings he always was, yet wants to escape from it. This is made worse by a helicopter-based massacre, where nearly everyone is murdered. With Vinny's help, Michael gets out safely. I submit that this is where the movie really goes down hill - not because of the action, which is good, but rather because the storyline gets so winded and tangled that you lose track of the reason behind anything.
All I can say from what I pieced out is that somehow, the Vatican is involved in banking in Italy, they have a huge real estate-related conglomerate called the Immortalie, and Michael wants a majority stake. It's not clear why, but he says later that he wants it to be a legitimate business venture and not an underbelly to criminal behavior. One of the other Dons, who is a long time family friend of Vito Corleone, makes repeated futile attempts to get Michael to share in the opportunity, but he refuses. The problem with this section is that the whole Vatican involvement seems thrown in and and random. It's almost like the whole scene was designed to do nothing more than to get an excuse for Michael to stay in Italy for an extended period until his son got a chance to do his opera thing. I normally don't have an issue with plot devices, provided the plot device is interesting. But I could never tell who was the bad guy here. The bishop, the priest, the pope, etc.
Throughout all of this, Connie, who is an unmentioned Consigliere (the title Tom the lawyer had in Part I) is instructing Vinnie to commit murder and plotting and scheming like Michael used to do before. The issue here is that it's totally not with her character to do these things, as she was totally repulsed by the very notion of crime in the family. This repulsion was displayed in her moving away with the guy she married and only coming back to the house when Michael was at his greatest need (when the mom died). Connie is cold, heartless, calculating, and totally without remorse in this episode, and there is no explanation as to this shock behavior.
Mary eventually begins to question her role as the chairman of the Foundation, thinking it may be a front for her father's illegal activities (it is), to which he denies the allegation and tries to convince her that he's trying desperately to go legit. The Mary character is easily the most annoying of the bunch, because the only thing she does is whine. Part of that has to do with the lines she was given, but there are frequent times when she doesn't even stand out as a character with the role. I don't know that anyone could have done a better job, but I felt that again, this was simply a plot device to bring out the best and the worst in other characters (i.e. Vinny and Michael) rather than a standout on her own. She is in this forbidden relationship with Vinny and Michael, though he says it's "dangerous" does not snap or go ballistic like he would before, and she seems perfectly fine having inappropriate relations with her cousin. She also doesn't bat an eye at the fact that her father killed her uncle - though he denies it, it's obvious she knows for a fact that he did and yet does not express the emotion that she should about it.
For someone who "dreads" Michael Corleone, Kay spends a substantial amount of time with and around him in this movie. It's a total about face from the Kay that we saw in Part II and this was annoying. She did a good job with what she was given, but it was too painfully obvious that they were trying hard to make it seem like Kay had all the love in the world for Michael and he for her. Yet, this is totally conflicting with Michael's reaction to Kay getting an abortion previously. The forced reconciliation of these two was sickening and unnecessary...we didn't need to see it. One scene would have been enough, but maybe they like the Kay character more than the rest of us. I was secretly hoping that Kay would get blown up or something instead of Michael, since she is the only female to interact with him and not get beaten, shot, or blown up in the process, yet she is the one who needs it the most.
In defiance of Michael's order, and authorized by Connie and Al Neri,Vinny takes some guys and goes on a manhunt to take out Joey Zaza after the massacre. The problem here is perception. According to Michael, Zaza is an enforcer only and has no real power, but in this scene he's pretty much a Don. It's unknown if there is some backing logic to this presentation or what, but it's explained that Joey could not have coordinated the massacre at his level. Regardless, Vinny and the guys execute the hit with a precision that is eerily similar to Vito's murder of Don Fanucci from Part II. Later, Vinny and Connie are chastised by a sick Michael - he didn't order the hit and it's not what he wanted, even if it was the right thing to do. Michael being sick is right on the heels of a sudden diabetes-related stroke that is never explained, but the movie portrays this as being triggered at Michael's stress going up due to the massacre and Zaza's actions, so you instinctively feel sympathy for Vinny. There are just too many unexplained things in the scene which cloud the ability to really appreciate what's happened.
Later, Michael is listening to his son's performance, and recalls the music. It's the same song that was played during one of his encounters with Apollonia. This causes him to tell the story to his children about her, and the fact she died because he was betrayed by his bodyguard. Of the entire movie, I found this to be the greatest scene, because it makes you think that he simply doesn't trust Vinny, when the fact is he wants to keep his children away from what he knows will happen to him and Vinny eventually. He's accepting the reality that he can't get away from the crime life no matter what he does, and he may even have come to terms with the fact that the more he eliminates enemies the more he gets in return. The scene though is ruined by Mary and the piss poor lack of emotion she exhibits in saying "NO!" to her father's pleas to stay away from Vinny. Anthony agrees with Michael that she should stop seeing him, but when she runs away, all of a sudden he's siding with her inexplicably.
After Vinny briefs Michael as to the potential future plots on his life, and admits that he wants the power to protect the family, Michael provides him an offer he simply can't refuse: He will retire as Don and elevate Vinny as Vincent Corleone. The price, however, is steep...he must no longer associate himself with Mary. This is Michael's brilliant attempt to keep Mary safe, and Vinny agrees with a brief hesitation. The transfer of power is subtle, and not nearly as impactful as with Vito and Michael. With Vinny now calling the shots, it is his duty to protect Michael from those who would harm him. He hires professionals to keep him from harm as Michael prepares for his son's opera performance. During this time, there is a lot of bloodshed. Al Neri dies after a successful assassination attempt that is never really explained, and it is done in the exact same style as with what happened in Part I. Connie poisons another character, with yet again no explanation for her cruelty. The two men who are primary for guarding Michael are taken out by a pro assassin, yet the assassin does not go back to get his kill until later. It is then that the least surprising yet most emotional scene of the movie happens.
On a selfish note, I will share my FAVORITE part of the movie.
Yeah.
Anyway, the final scene of the movie shows a severely aged Michael sitting out in front of Don Tommasino's villa by himself, surrounded by dogs. Nothing is said and nobody shows up, but he just collapses. It's unclear if he dies from illness, a broken heart, or just the passage of time.
And so ends a movie that is unnecessarily long, with a convoluted story, complex and contradictory characters, and a bunch of bloodshed. It's not clear what they were going for here. There weren't many flashbacks so it didn't strike a ton of nostalgia. Perhaps they wanted to emphasize the reality that Michael could never escape the mob life; I'm not sure. In any event, I felt this movie was just not strong at all, and it's perfectly understandable why people were so upset at the ending.
